


The Ghosts that Haunt Us

by Androids_in_Metropolis



Category: Heathers (1988), Heathers: The Musical - Murphy & O'Keefe
Genre: AU, Angst, Body Burning, Cuddling, Cute, F/M, Fluff, Killing, Love, Nightmares, Short Story, Supernatural Elements, Supernatural inspired, couples, ghost hunter, ghost story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-27
Updated: 2015-05-27
Packaged: 2018-04-01 12:12:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4019305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Androids_in_Metropolis/pseuds/Androids_in_Metropolis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Veronica wakes with a bump in the night, and Jason Dean sleeps on his floor. Nightmares are hardly ever for nothing, just a little sparkle up your eye. </p><p>Prompt: Nightmares</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ghosts that Haunt Us

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Adr](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Adr).



> For Adr. I hope you like this :) I changed the universe, so now it's an au to my au, but I think it's still cool. I do like the other better though, so it should come back :)
> 
> Please review and tell me what you think:)

A dark room greeted Veronica as she startled awake. There was no sound. There was no light. What could have woken her? She didn’t dream, and phantom sounds never did trouble her. If they did she would be dead by now. Even without the sounds she was near dead. 

Her mind flashed back to the days of Kindergarten-A connection that only a half asleep mind could make-and the days when things were so simple. The days before boyfriends, or murders, or father’s that should have kept their distance but didn’t. Life used to be so easy, ha! 

“Who’s there?” she called. Any trust that a bump in the night was just that-a bump in the night-had disappeared a long time ago. Nothing made a sound without a reason, and she had long since stopped being so naive and believing it did. Boyfriends had taught her that lesson the hard way. One boyfriend in particular. 

When no answer came her mind began to wander. She wondered if he was sleeping...the only boyfriend she didn’t mind coming in without a warning knock. The only person she trusted with her life, gave her soul to. She wondered if she had a soul...did it burn down with the bodies that had washed up on the shore? They hadn’t killed them, but they might as well have. She wondered if he felt the same way. 

J.D...he was the everything of her world lately. He and Martha. They breathed, though at times she found herself wondering if J.D was real or just a figment of her famously riotous imagination. She wondered if he dreamed. She wondered if the thumps of the wind in the night woke him as it woke her. She wondered if he was awake now...maybe she could walk to his house. Maybe they’d drive downtown and get midnight pancakes. Maybe he wasn’t as crazy as he seemed. Maybe she was the crazy one. Really, she had no idea at this point. When they had last seen each other it had been at the ‘funeral’ for Heather Chandler. They had burned the body on the beach, watching as her soul flew free from her body and out to sea. 

That was the thing about being with J.D-It was all dreamy. Real people didn’t find and burn dead bodies to set their sick souls free. Real people didn’t make her feel the way he did. Real people had expectations and envelopes to push. J.D didn’t have any of that. She didn’t know if he felt anything-That was part of what made him so attractive. He said he loved her. She didn’t know if she believed him, but she sure liked hearing it. 

Her eyes started to wander closed and she thought about laying back down, her dark hair decorating the pillow. It would be nice. She could leave the bump to the night to disappear with the morning. It could just be a tree branch against her window. It could be in her head. 

Shaking herself awake she pushed the thought away, pulling her pale legs off the warm bed and letting her feet touch the freezing cold wood of her floor. After sitting on the edge of the bed for a while wondering if she was really going to get up she pushed herself off the bed and began to rummage around for socks and a bra. 

She would go and walk to his house. She would shake him awake. She would sleep next to him. No, she would dance with him...she didn’t know what she was going to do. She was going to go to him, and that was good enough. Pulling on her new clothes she grabbed her coat, shoes, and hat before dropping out the window. As the cold air met her face she shivered, scrunching her eyes closed and cursing softly as she quickly made her way out of her yard to to the main street. 

She began to run as she got closer, jumping J.D’s fence, and running to his basement-bedroom window. She didn’t knock, didn’t wait to be invited inside. She chuckled as she saw how weak his lock was-Just a standard one. She had learned to pick it when she was in diapers. If he was really hoping to keep anyone out of his room with locks like that he had a lesson to learn. 

Dropping through his now open window she thought she would find him happily asleep in his bed, maybe a mattress on the floor. What she found in the end wasn’t what she had been expecting-He was crumpled up on the floor, tears coursing down his cheeks, though he seemed to be asleep. His breathing was sharp and ragged, his breast irregular. 

His dark hair was matted to his forehead, his whole body shaking as he shuddered to his own music. Veronica dropped to her knees beside J.D, shaking him gently until his eyes snapped open and he made to punch her before she saw the recognition in his eyes and he lowered his hand, apologizing horsley. 

“You were dreaming,” she observed, brushing his thick hair away, kissing his forehead. She didn’t say what she was thinking-’You were having a nightmare.’ Veronica was glad that he was haunted too, that she wasn’t crazy. She was sad though, for him, for the pain he had to be feeling. His mother had killed herself, his father had been crazy when he was free and she assumed he was crazier still now that he was locked away. J.D was as crazy as he was, but he was also careful. He also cared. That is where the difference lay, she assumed. 

“So I was, but what are you doing here, darling?” He asked, looking up at her, not moving his head from her lap. He was pretty sure he already knew why she was here-The voices in the night. The shuddering and the moans. “Not that I don’t want you here, of course,” he hurried to supply. 

He wished he could have kept her out of this, his hobby. Letting souls go-Of course, they always blamed you for their death, but then again, who blames the dead? The haunting would have been enough to drive him off his rocker if he hadn’t learned how to cope. He could shut people out, he could make the noise go away. He could pretend he was alone. That wasn’t an option anymore, not now that he had found someone he could love. He couldn’t shut Veronica away like he did everyone else. She was more important than anything in the world, or out of it. 

“I came to be with you, the night was with me,” Veronica said, not sure if she was making much sense. The ghosts of her ‘friends’ were laughing behind her, and she could hear them tittering amongst themselves.

J.D sat up, pulling her close, and resting his chin on the top of her head, glaring over at the Heathers and Kurt and Ram. They were barely there, but oh, they laughed. He could feel Veronica relax against him and he thanked his stars for her. She put up with a lot, his beautiful love did. She put up with so much...so, so much. 

 

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It all started in the cafeteria, the first day they met. He had felt something, and it wasn’t just a sexual and primal urge. He wanted to kiss her gently, and he wanted woo her properly, bring her out dancing...show her off, take her home and make her feel like a queen. 

He knew he was sick. He knew he had a 0.55 chance of finding the person in the world that could make him feel the way Veronica Sawyer could make him feel. Sociopaths aren’t likely to find ‘the one’ so easily, but there she was, right there and into him. He wasn’t honest, he wasn’t easy, he wasn’t safe, and he wasn’t sane. He had told her all that but she had pushed forward, and he knew she was the really and truly the only one. 

He had been so scared when he had found the bodies on the beach, each with identical suicide notes pinned to their colour coded outfits-All three Heathers had drowned themselves in one go, each with a different and equally plausible, yet ridiculous, reason penciled to their chests. J.D had been walking with Veronica when they’d found them, and he was surprised he hadn’t sensed them before hand. They were cold, and blue, and Veronica had screamed. It was her scream that haunted his dreams, the knowledge that he had brought her into his world. 

They had burned the bodies right there on the beach, Veronica folded in on herself, tears falling on the corpses of her loved ones. 

That’s when he had told her the complete truth; He was a sociopath. He couldn’t feel what she could, but he did feel for her. He could feel for her. He was a spirit hunter, finding the victims of suicide and murder and setting their souls free. 

The government employed people like him, who didn’t have attachments to rid the world of ghosts like the ones that now haunted Veronica and himself. If the bodies had been handled by the police their souls would be trapped inside the modlering beings, rocking in on themselves until the body exploded or rotted away from the strain of holding in the cries of the dearly departed. 

It wasn’t so long after the first group of suicides that Kurt and Ram had been found, burned, and spread to the winds. They had been found out as gay, and together they chose to end their lives. J.D and Veronica had been left with the clean up duty. He had nearly cried watching her cry over them. Watching her yell at the sky as he burned their prostrate bodies, letting her hug him tightly as they floated away on the winds towards the ocean. 

Later he told her that the souls would stay on the earth for about two and a half years, wandering around and haunting the person who destroyed their bodies. They weren’t generally malicious, and were at times even friendly, but they were still a bit of a bother. They could haunt your dreams and all your waking hours. It didn’t mean they would, but they could. 

J.D had never seen a person turn so white in his life. He had been terrified that Veronica would bolt after that, and that he’d lose her, maybe even have to burn her body along with whoever she dragged down with her. She wasn’t the type to go out without a bang...

Veronica hadn’t run...Veronica hadn’t hid. Veronica had said she wanted in, and like a fool he had agreed. Now he wondered if it was the right thing, if it was okay to let such a beautiful thing into his dark and sick world. 

She kissed his worries away.

=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-

“I didn’t know ghost hunters had nightmares,” Veronica whispered, kissing his forehead and his collar bones and everything in between. J.D moaned into her touch, smiling around her lips. He loved when she called him like a superhero-Sometimes not feeling was the best feeling, and she knew it. 

“We do,” he mumbled, kissing her back, trying not to be too rough. He had learned that she wasn’t quite like him, that she needed to be handled differently than his left hand liked to treat himself in the dark quiet of a ghost town. She didn’t like bleeding, and she didn’t like bruises. He never made her bleed. Never bruised her. He was careful as a roughly bred boy knew how to be. 

“And how to soul eaters deal with nightmares?” she asked, pulling away and looking at him seriously. She knew the minuted that he told her everything that she was going to have to adapt, and this was just another way to adapt and stay apart of his life. 

“We don’t,” J.D whispered, biting his lip, and looking at her apologetically. The five ghosts in the corner looked on expectantly and he eyed them up and down quickly. He couldn’t wait until their time was up and they were able to move to the next world..what was it now? Two years to go? The probation period was killing him. “There is one thing we can do…” he said, blushing a little as he broached the subject of two people, one bed. 

“And what is that?” Veronica asked, letting him pet her hair away from her face and kiss her on the temple as he pulled away. 

“Sleep with another hunter so you don’t get lost in our nightmare,” he whispered, knowing it sounded stupid, but he was pretty sure it would work, at least for them. “Like children like to sleep together, instead of on their own,” he said, trying to explain his theory. 

It didn’t take much pushing before Veronica was stripping back to her PJs and climbing into the still made bed in the corner of the basement room, calling for J.D to follow her in. He didn’t take much prodding either, sticking his tongue out at the ghosts behind him, kicking off his pants (He laughed as he noticed he had not only slept on the floor, but in his clothes too) and nestled in next to Veronica, kissing her softly as they both fell to sleep, his arm around her chest and her hand holding his. The ghosts watched from the corner, laughing breathily among themselves and slowly fading away to leave the couple to sleep in peace for once. 

Sleep had never been so welcome as when welcomed as two with one mind, two hearts beating as one. 

No nightmares troubled soul setters that night, or many to come.


End file.
